Two LLNL scientists garner U.S. Dept. of Energy early career awards

Computer scientist Greg Bronevetsky and physicist Vsevolod Soukhanovskii of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have each won a Department of Energy Early Career Research Program award.

Soukhanovskii and Bronevetsky are among 69 scientists nationwide who will receive five-year research grants funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The program is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.

Bronevetsky, who works in LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing, will focus his research on reliable high-performance supercomputing, and Soukhanovskii will conduct research in the Advanced High Heat Flux Diverter Program on the National Spherical Torus Experiment. Currently on a research assignment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, his research is important to the development of fusion as an energy source.

The new methods Bronevetsky is developing for analyzing and overcoming the component failures that inevitably occur on increasingly large, complex and powerful machines are critical to the development of next-generation peta- (quadrillions of operations per second) and exa-scale (quintillion operations per second) supercomputers.

Under the program, researchers based at DOE national laboratories, where DOE typically covers full salary and expenses of laboratory employees, grants will be at least $500,000 per year to cover year-round salary plus research expenses. Beginning with the next fiscal year, the Department’s Office of Science plans to continue the program, choosing new candidates on an annual basis, and supporting them under annual appropriations.

To be eligible for an award, a researcher must be a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory, who received a Ph.D. within the past 10 years. Research topics are required to fall within the purview of the Department’s Office of Science’s six major program offices: Advanced Scientific Computing Research; Basic Energy Sciences; Biological and Environmental Research; Fusion Energy Sciences; High Energy Physics; and Nuclear Physics.

Awardees were selected from a pool of 1,750 university- and national laboratory-based applicants. Selection was based on peer review by outside scientific experts.